7 Deadly (poi)Sins

"Well, is it like, shedding? Because I shed - my hair falls out all the time. Maybe you're just shedding?"
"No, I've been running my hands through my hair, testing it since I started treatment - it's only just started coming out."

I know without investigative measures that it isn't vanity Brendan is concerned with - he is worried about looking sick. This is the person who was at work the day he got his wisdom teeth pulled. This is my brother, who fights nausea throughout a 5 day work week helping patients through their physical therapy treatments. He swallows pill cocktails and gets 7 different types of poison pumped through his veins once a week and still dances harder and sings as loud as I do while seeing the Beach Boys play Ravina (best show ever by the way). He goes to the gym every day and drinks twice his body weight in water and looks like the youngest, healthiest, most vibrant gentleman on Earth. No one would ever know. Ever.
Now...they might be able to guess.
Cycle one of his treatment is complete. It has been three weeks since he has started. Less than two months since we found out. Roughly two years he's been harboring it. Some days I feel like I forget the weight of the entire thing - I stare at the bracelet that I tie to my wrist each time I get out of the shower and feel guilty about being forgetful. Today is a day when I feel powerless to stop this thing. I have to imagine that the side effects are only a display of the drugs at work.

Danny Sullivan was my stage manager (a title that does not do him justice) during Lieutenant of Inishmore at the Station Theatre. He has been fighting cancer for years now, and about a week ago, I got word that it had devoured his brain. Danny Sullivan is going to die this weekend. I won't make it down south in time to see him before he leaves. Losing Danny is a tragedy for that small town, for the theatre, and especially for the people who knew and adored him.

I can't help all the dread and fear that is resurfaced lately...or the frustration with how counterproductive it is.
I do know, however, that Brendan isn't going down without a fight - rather, isn't going down. From day one there was no other option, idea, or outcome other than the defeat of this cancer.

Brendan always sends me a draft of his medical school essays before he submits them to the schools, and I proceed to tear them apart, write him new sentences, fix his grammar, and go to town with a metaphorical red pen. The jist of these essays, is a page or so explanation of why he would be an asset to an institution, or the medical community. Granted, Brendan isn't a great writer, but I come down on these essays extra hard because there is no way his words can adequately express just how intelligent and talented and logical and driven and determined and delightful and funny and great he is. There is no way to let these strangers, these invisible judges of our numbers and paragraphs know how fucking lucky they would be to have him going to their school. To have him in the professional world as an ambassador for their educational prowess. Luckier than they would be to have me, that's for damn sure.

I've been having vivid, lengthy, and intruding dreams lately. There is no mystery to their origins and no enigma as to the service they are providing the waking version of myself. The fire is raging. We are walking through it with clenched teeth, squared shoulders, and deliberate strides.


[edit: Around 4pm today Danny Sullivan's battle ended. To Danny...]